Ibeyi w/ Flo Morrissey at the Cedar, Minneapolis (30 March 2015)

French Cuban Ibeyi (twins Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Díaz) are on their first ever North American tour… recently selling out the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis on Monday, March 30th.

 

Opening up for this show was London’s Flo Morrissey, also on her first time touring in America. Her 30-min set felt like you were spending a nice acoustic evening with Joni Mitchell. The seated audience was highly respectful crowd, so playing her quiet music to the Cedar was just perfect for Morrissey… except for that one or two time when you can hear a distracting loud/crying child.

She did one cover, “In a Manner of Speaking”, which she erroneously credited to Nouvelle Vague (who are a wonderful French cover band), but it’s probably acceptable since her version is also a striped down acoustic version to the Tuxedomoon song.

Currently Flo Morrissey only has one single (“Pages of Gold”), but expect an upcoming album from Glassnote Records sometime this year.

Just to give you a little background on Ibeyi, the word actually means “twins” in the Yoruba language (ethnic group of southwestern Nigeria). The twin sisters actually sings in both English and Yoruba, with Lisa-Kaindé Diaz spending her time mostly behind the keyboard, while
Naomi plays the cajón (which is a beat box commonly used in South America) and Batá drums.

Ibeyi’s nearly hour set started with an a cappella version of “Eleggua”, which showcased how beautifully harmonizing the two French-Cuban twins can be. A cappella were used again in the middle of their set (when they talk about “Shango” as “daughter of thunder” and “Yemaya” as “daughter of the sea”) and again for their set finale, for “Ibeyi” (dedicating the song to another set of twins in the audience).

The combination of vocals, traditional Cuban instruments, and electronic loops/beats, gave Ibeyi’s music a broad appeal to both old and young world music fans.

With just only one album, it didn’t surprised me that they typically don’t do any encores (having exhausted all the songs they knew how to play live)… however since the audience clearly were expecting/demanding an encore with a standing ovation, the twins quickly came back on stage to reprise “River”. Only the chorus part, “I will come to your river” were sung with the audience finishing the line, “wash my soul.”

Ibeyi’s self-titled debut album is out now on XL Recordings.

Remaining Ibeyi tour dates: